Christopher Columbus became the first known European to reach the Caribbean, making initial landfall on an island in the Bahamas. The year was 1492. On a subsequent voyage, he was the first European to land on the South American mainland, in Venezuela. Not that he fully appreciated the significance, for he always believed he had reached Asia in spite of finding no evidence to support this.
Shipwreck survivor to navigator supreme
Christopher Columbus (Cristoforo Colombo or, in Spanish, Cristóbal Colón) was almost certainly born in Genoa in 1451, the son of a weaver. Like many Genoese, he went to sea, and he first appears in records having survived a shipwreck off the coast of Portugal in 1476. In the years that followed, he took part in journeys north to England and Iceland and south down the coast of Africa to the Gold Coast as far as Elmina. Columbus became a very accomplished navigator, a skill that was to prove essential in his later voyages.
Like most educated Europeans, he believed that the globe was a sphere and he started to think about travelling to China and India by going west rather than east. He made two important and erroneous assumptions, however — he thought Asia spread much further east and that the world was much smaller than it was, so making such a voyage practical in his view. Others disagreed over the practicality, and initially he failed to gain support from the rulers of Portugal, Spain, France and England.
Courting royalty
He moved from Portugal to Spain in 1486, then under the rule of Ferdinand and Isabella. After much lobbying, he was summoned before them in January 1492, shortly after the conquest of Granada that re-established Christian rule across Spain. They agreed to provide assistance for a fleet of three boats to sail west. If Columbus discovered any territories, he would become Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Governor, entitled to 10 per cent of all income generated by these new colonies.
With investment from a group of Italian merchants, he brought together three boats, the Santa María, a three-masted, 100-tonne carrack, and two smaller caravels, the Pinta and the Niña, and prepared for the voyage at Palos, near Cadiz. On the morning of 3 August 1492, the boats set sail from Palos, according to Columbus’s journal. Seven days later they reached the Canaries, where they had to wait for the rudder of the Pinta to be repaired. A month later they departed ‘shaping a course to the west’, using the northeast trade winds to head into the unknown.
Replica caravels of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, that participated in the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1905.
Signs of a new world
A week out from the Canaries he noted ‘they met with very temperate breezes, so that there was great pleasure in enjoying the mornings, nothing being wanted but the song of nightingales’. After another week, following a number of optimistic notes that land must be near by, Columbus recorded that he ‘saw a whale, which is a sign that they were near land, because they always keep near the shore’, but he continued to be disappointed. With gentle winds, the crew were beginning to be concerned over when they would reach land, and, more importantly, whether there would ever be any wind to take them home again.
On Sunday 7 October, the Niña hoisted a flag and fired a gun, the signal that they had spotted signs of land. By Thursday 11 October they saw more birds and vegetation in the water, including a small branch covered in berries. Later in the day they thought they saw a light, and then two hours after midnight on Friday 12 October, land was seen close by. They waited until dawn and then prepared to land. Columbus was sure they had reached the East Indies, but the island, which Columbus called San Salvador and which the Taino people who lived there called Guanahani, was in the Bahamas. They landed and Columbus ‘took possession of the said island for the King and Queen’. Soon the locals came to see what was going on, and in a style oft repeated by European colonizers, Columbus ‘gave to some of them red caps, and glass beads to put round their necks, and many other things of little value, which gave them great pleasure, and made them so much our friends that it was a marvel to see’.
A map of the world, prepared by Juan de la Costa in 1500. He accompanied Columbus on the 1492 voyage and this map contains the earliest known representation of the Americas, including recognizable details of Caribbean islands.
A peaceable people
He reported that all the islanders were ‘as naked as when their mothers bore them’ and that they painted themselves in different colours and designs. They were peaceable and ‘they neither carry nor know anything of arms, for I showed them swords, and they took them by the blade and cut themselves through ignorance’.
’They have no iron, their darts being wands without iron, some of them having a fish’s tooth at the end, and others being pointed in various ways.‘
However, Columbus, well aware that his sponsors were seeking gold and other treasures, soon established that the island was poor. Having ascertained that larger and wealthier islands lay to the south, he soon departed to investigate further. Stopping at various islands on the way, he reached Cuba, as the Taino called it, on 28 October. He originally hoped it was Japan, but then decided it was some part of China. He noted the lush vegetation, good harbours and high mountains, but he really wanted to find the gold mines he had been told about. In this and his wish to find the emperor of China, he was disappointed.
The first settlement
Next he sailed to the island called Hayti by the Taino and which he named Isla Espanola (Hispaniola). He visited various places along the coast but disaster struck on Christmas night, as the Santa María ran aground on a reef and had to be abandoned. Most of the goods on the ship and some of its timbers were brought to land. He was welcomed by the local chief, who agreed that he could build a fort for his crew. Named La Navidad, it became the first Spanish settlement in the Caribbean, though its exact location on the northern coast of Haiti remains a mystery. On 16 January 1493, he set sail in the Niña for Spain, with some captured Taino but leaving behind thirty-nine crew members. After a difficult crossing he reached the Azores on 18 February, where he had to stop for repairs, and then stormy weather forced Columbus to dock near Lisbon on 4 March 1493, which left him with some explaining to do, as he had arrived in a Spanish boat. However, he was soon able to leave and returned to Palos on 15 March 1493. The Pinta had returned separately. Columbus was later received by Ferdinand and Isabella in Barcelona and he was able to show off his captives, the gold and exotic goods that had survived the journey.
True intentions revealed
He was given support for another voyage leaving in September 1493, made up of seventeen boats and around 1,400 people. This is when things started to go wrong for Columbus and also for the indigenous inhabitants. On his return in late November he found that La Navidad had been destroyed and none of his men had survived. The newly arrived Spaniards quickly forced the Taino to be their labourers and their days were to be numbered. Columbus continued his exploration of the Caribbean. On his second voyage he explored more of the coasts of Cuba and Hispaniola and visited Jamaica, while on his third voyage, in 1498–1500, he reached Trinidad and the Venezuelan coast. However, he was an unpopular Governor and had to return to Spain in chains after disputes with the settlers. In his last voyage, in 1502–4, he explored the coast of central America, ending roughly where the Panama Canal now starts. He returned to Spain and died in Valladolid on 20 May 1506, a neglected figure.
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